It is well known to operate a number of different application software programs in the same computer system. In some cases, operations of the various application programs may be dependent on data or other outputs of one or more other application programs that operate on the same computer system. In such cases, it may be necessary or desirable for operation of at least some of the application programs to be coordinated.
One computer program that is used to coordinate operation of different applications on a computer system is known as “Unicenter AutoSys Job Management” and is published by Computer Associates International, Inc., Islandia, N.Y. This program, commonly referred to as “AutoSys”, manages jobs and schedules within the computer system and controls individual applications to begin jobs when prerequisite jobs are complete. However, the type of scheduling performed by AutoSys may not result in timely and efficient completion of jobs in some cases.